Quotes about Church

From time to time complaints are made about the ringing of church bells. It seems strange that a generation which tolerates the uproar of the internal combustion engine and the wailing of the jazz band should be so sensitive to the one loud noise that is made to the glory of God. England, alone in the world

You simply cannot be a disciple without being a missionary—a sent one. For way too long discipleship has been limited to issues relating to our own personal morality and worked out in the context of the four walls of the church with its privatized religion.

So a working definition of missional church is a community of God's people that defines itself, and organizes its life around, its real purpose of being an agent of God's mission to the world. In other words, the church's true and authentic organizing principle is mission.

if the church fails to make the shift to apostolic movements again, Christian influence in Western culture will continue to fade, and church attendance will remain in its current trajectory of decline. All we can say in writing this book is, not on our shift! Not if we can help it.

A church which pitches its tents without constantly looking out for new horizons, which does not continually strike camp, is being untrue to its calling. . . . [We must] play down our longing for certainty, accept what is risky, and live by improvisation and experiment.

The church (the ecclesia), when true to its real calling, when it is on about what God is on about, is by far and away the most potent force for transformational change the world has ever seen.

C. S. Lewis rightly understood that the purpose of the church was to draw people to Christ and make them like Christ. He said that the church exists for no other purpose. "If the Church is not doing this, then all the cathedrals, clergy, missions, sermons, even the Bible, are a waste of time.

In the United States of America there are twenty-seven million people under twenty-one years of age who receive no Christian training at all. Juvenile crime in the big cities is tremendous—sometimes it seems absolutely out of control. Every week one million people are dying without Jesus. In one minute, eighty-five people pass into eternity. In just the brief span of a church service hundreds are passing out into the presence of God. Does that mean anything to you?

What about your church prayer meeting? Is it tucked away somewhere because there is a busy program in operation and folks have no time to stop and pray? What would happen if your whole Sunday school gathered together for one hour to wait upon God, to beseech Him to pour out His blessing on your church? Too frequently our programs make no room for God's presence or for His power to work. Churches have plenty of people ready to interfere, but very few willing to intercede.

I was the second-youngest child in a family that took up the better part of an entire pew at our Baptist church.

'Phantom of the Opera' started in my little 100-seater converted church in Britain with a stage where we did what we did. But it was the score itself was what made it.

I actually grew up playing the piano in the church and was deeply involved in music ministry.